Tape shows suspects in Ft. Dix case buying guns

There was Dritan Duka, one of the alleged Fort Dix terrorists, pawing and inspecting an AK-47 assault rifle in the dining room of a Cherry Hill apartment and looking quite satisfied.

"This is nice," he says, wrapping his hands around the weapon before turning to his older brother. "Look at this, Shain."

More small talk follows between the brothers and their arms broker, the man who lives in the apartment. Then cash changes hands. Agents storm the room. There's shouting, and the video goes to black.

A day after defense attorneys spent three hours arguing the government manufactured the terrorism charges against their clients, federal prosecutors yesterday launched their case with a piece of evidence they hoped jurors would not soon forget: footage of the brothers buying illegal weapons usually reserved for the battlefield.

"How many (you) want?" says the third man in the video, the tenant secretly working for the FBI.

"I'm going to take everything," Dritan Duka replies.

The May 7, 2007, video depicts the final scene in the 15-month investigation, a sting where the Dukas, illegal ethnic Albanian immigrants, paid about $3,100 for four M-16 machine guns and three AK-47s.

Prosecutors contend the arms were the weapons the Dukas, their brother Eljvir and two other defendants, Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar, wanted to use to strike Fort Dix or other installations. They say the men, residents of Cherry Hill and Philadelphia, were Islamic jihadists inspired by al Qaeda -- and that the plot is proof that homegrown terror cells exist in the United States.

Each of the five defendants is charged with conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The Dukas also face weapons charges from the sting.

The defendants have countered that they never planned or intended any attack. They say the conspiracy was stoked by the paid FBI informants hired to infiltrate their group and by agents eager to make a terrorism case.

Frederick Lang, an investigator for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office who was assigned to the FBI's South Jersey/Philadelphia Joint Terrorism Task Force, said agents began the probe in January 2006, when Mount Laurel police passed along a videotape that Eljvir Duka tried to get copied at a Circuit City.

The video showed the defendants at a shooting range in the Pocono Mountains, uttering phrases including "Allah Akbar" and "jihad." Lang said the gunmen on the video marched toward their targets as they fired.

"There's only one reason for that," said Lang, a former firearms instructor in the Air Force. "It's a firing maneuver tactic."

Defense attorneys have suggested the trip was a vacation, not the training mission prosecutors say. They played for jurors portions that show the defendants skiing at Camelback Mountain and riding snowmobiles.

"What kind of 'training' do you get from skiing?" Michael Huff, the attorney for Dritan Duka, asked Lang.

"It depends on what your mission is," the investigator replied.

Trying to show there was no conspiracy, Huff also pointed out that Dritan Duka appears surprised on the video when the informant selling the weapons, Mahmoud Omar, asks whether Shnewer, the lead defendant, knows about the deal.

"What about Mohamad?" asks the informant.

"He doesn't know nothing," Dritan Duka replies.

The prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Fitzpatrick and Michael Hammer, opened the day by presenting the commanders or ranking officers at military sites they said were potential targets: Fort Monmouth, Fort Dix, McGuire Air Force Base, Dover Air Force Base, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, and the U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Philadelphia.

Col. Ronald Thaxton, the commanding officer at Fort Dix, said more than 3,000 military personnel gather on the base at any given time.

Under questioning from defense attorneys, Thaxton acknowledged that civilians can easily access a map of the base online or pass through the gates -- questions designed to dilute the government's argument that the defendants needed to plan recon missions to study the base.

Each year, Thaxton said, tens of thousands of civilians attend youth soccer games, fireworks and air show festivities, or visit the museum or municipal court. Most need only to show legal driver's license.

But, the prosecutor asked, "If there were a violent attack on Fort Dix, is it fair to say those civilians would be in the crossfire?"